It happens in secret…in the dark… at a time and in a place known only to God. In the holy darkness of the womb is the great miracle: the conception of a child. How can it be that a microscopic cell of one human being can find and join the microscopic cell of another and within minutes join characteristics of both to create a never-before-or-after-created human being? How can that child, not yet even implanted in her mother’s womb be marked with the capacity for the core characteristics of God—the capacity to love, to be faithful, and to be true?
I never cease to wonder at it.
It is always a miracle, even though it happens more than 300,000 times a day across the world. Every child is a wondrous, miraculous act of God.
But one day, more than 2000 years ago, in Judea, there was an even greater miracle. There was a child conceived without the war in her soul which we know as original sin. When the DNA in her father and in her mother joined to form her, it did not include the mark of Eve. Mary was not plagued with the selfishness, the survival-of-the-fittest ego, the self-protection at the cost of others that all the rest of us have lived with all our lives.
For this conception was “Immaculate.” It was without the stain of sin. This was the conception of Mary, the Mother of God, the Theotokos.
Exactly how was Mary conceived without sin? The scientist in me wonders.
The Church simply teaches it happened because Mary possessed the grace of her Son from the moment of her own conception. God gave her the grace of Jesus at the moment of her own creation.
While the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception was officially defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854, the Church has believed in it through the centuries. Until the scientific inquiry of the 1700s and 1800s wanted to know, like me, how exactly God formed a vessel for Jesus in Mary, Mary’s Immaculate Conception was accepted across the Church as simple common sense: God would not put His Son in the womb of a sinful woman. So Mary had to be conceived without sin.
Here is what the Catholic Catechism says about Mary and the Immaculate Conception:
486 The Father’s only Son, conceived as man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is “Christ”, that is to say, anointed by the Holy Spirit, from the beginning of his human existence, though the manifestation of this fact takes place only progressively: to the shepherds, to the magi, to John the Baptist, to the disciples. Thus the whole life of Jesus Christ will make manifest “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.”
487 What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.
488 “God sent forth his Son”, but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary”:
The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.
489 Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. At the very beginning there was Eve; despite her disobedience, she receives the promise of a posterity that will be victorious over the evil one, as well as the promise that she will be the mother of all the living. By virtue of this promise, Sarah conceives a son in spite of her old age. Against all human expectation God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his faithfulness to his promises: Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther; and many other women. Mary “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established.”
The Immaculate Conception
490 To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.
491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.
493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”. By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.
Our readings today tell the beginning and the end of the story of Mary. The Old Testament reading tells the story of Adam and Eve, the story of our human, survival-of-the-fittest, self-absorbed mentality. Satan tricked them. They disobeyed God. They set the stage for the internal wars we all have, the wars of a nature pock-marked by sinfulness.
The Gospel tells the story of Mary and the angel. It is the story of obedience, trust, openness which grace gives humans the capacity to show. Mary questioned the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” but she did not fight or rebel. Instead she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Her grace-filled nature enabled her to say “yes” to God instead of the “no” said by Eve (and Adam).
The Epistle extends Mary’s story to us. It tells us that now that we have grace through Baptism, that the blessings Mary enjoyed from the moment of conception are also OURS NOW. We were not conceived without sin, but “in him we were also chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will, so that we might exists for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ.”
Our own conception as a human being, a person created in the image of God, was an ordinary miracle.
Through Mary, who always shows us her Son, we, ordinary miracles that we are, can claim our blessings. Because “he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.”
We were not born without sin. But Christ can make us “full of grace,” too.
Prayer:
Mary, conceived without sin, be our Mother, our guide. Help us to see through your pure eyes, to love with your pure heart, to obey with your whole hearted trust, to hold your Son within us, as you held him in your womb and in your arms. Be with me today, Mary. Lead me and guide me to Jesus. You always have. You always will. Amen.
